This list of ancient Iranian peoples includes the names of Indo-European peoples speaking Iranian languages or otherwise considered Iranian ethnically or linguistically in sources from the late 1st millennium BC to the early 2nd millennium AD.
Background
Ancient and modern Iranian peoples mostly descend from the Proto-Indo-Iranians, common ancestors respectively of the Proto-Iranians and Proto-Indo-Aryans, this people possibly was the same of the Sintashta-Petrovka culture. Proto-Iranians separated from the Proto-Indo-Aryans early in the 2nd-millennium BCE. These peoples probably called themselves by the name "Aryans", which was the basis for several ethnonyms of Iranian and Indo-Aryan peoples or for the entire group of peoples which shares kin and similar cultures.[1]
Iranian peoples first appear in Assyrian records in the 9th century BCE. In Classical Antiquity, they were found primarily in Scythia (in Central Asia, Eastern Europe, the Balkans and the Northern Caucasus) and Persia (in Western Asia). They divided into "Western" and "Eastern" branches from an early period, roughly corresponding to the territories of Persia and Scythia, respectively. By the 1st millennium BCE, Medes, Persians, Bactrians and Parthians populated the Iranian plateau, while others such as the Scythians, Sarmatians, Cimmerians and Alans populated the steppes north of the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, as far as the Great Hungarian Plain in the west. The Saka tribes remained mainly in the far-east, eventually spreading as far east as the Ordos Desert.[1]
Ancient Iranian peoples spoke languages that were the ancestors of modern Iranian languages, these languages form a sub-branch of the Indo-Iranian sub-family, which is a branch of the family of the wider Indo-European languages.[1]
Ancient Iranian peoples lived in many regions and, at about 200 BC, they had as farthest geographical points dwelt by them: to the west the Great Hungarian Plain (Alföld), east of the Danube river (where they formed an enclave of Iranian peoples), Ponto-Caspian steppe in today's southern Ukraine, Russia and far western Kazakhstan, and to the east the Altay Mountains western and northwestern foothills and slopes and also western Gansu, Ordos Desert, and western Inner Mongolia, in northwestern China(Xinjiang), to the north southern West Siberia and southern Ural Mountains (Riphean Mountains?) and to the south the northern coasts of the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Sea.:[1][2]: 348 The geographical area dwelt by ancient Iranian peoples was therefore vast (at the end of the 1st Millennium BC they dwelt in an area of several million square kilometers or miles thus roughly corresponding to half or slightly less than half of the geographical area that all Indo-European peoples dwelt in Eurasia).[1]
During Late Antiquity, in a process that lasted until Middle Age, the Iranian populations of Scythia and Sarmatia, in the western (Ponto-Caspian) and central (Kazakh) Eurasian Steppe and most of Central Asia (that once formed a large geographic area dwelt by Iranian peoples), started to be conquered by other non-Iranian peoples and began to be marginalized, assimilated or expelled mainly as result of the Turkic peoples conquests and migrations that resulted in the Turkification of the remaining Iranian ethnic groups in Central Asia and the western Eurasian steppe. Germanic, Slavic and later Mongolian conquests and migrations also contributed to the decline of the Iranian peoples in these regions. By the 10th century, the Eastern Iranian languages were no longer spoken in many of the territories they were once spoken, with the exception of Pashto in Central Asia, Ossetic in the Northern Caucasus and Pamiri languages in Badakhshan. Most of Central Asia and the western Eurasian steppe was almost completely Turkified. However, in most of the southern regions, corresponding to the Iranian Plateau and mountains, more densely populated, Iranian peoples continued to be most of the population and remained so until modern times.[1]
Various Persian empires flourished throughout Antiquity, however, they fell to the Islamic conquest in the 7th century, although other Persian empires formed again later.
Ancient peoples of uncertain origin with possible Iranian background or partially Iranian
Mainly Iranian Background
Iranians mixed with other non-Iranian peoples
Dacian-Iranian
Greek-Iranian
Northwest Caucasian-Iranian
Slavic-Iranian
- Antes, may have been a Slavic people and not an Iranian one or a mixed Iranian and Slavic people.
Thracian-Iranian
Mixed peoples that had some Iranian component
Celtic-Germanic-Iranian
Possible Iranian or Non-Iranian peoples
Iranian or other Indo-European peoples
Iranian or Anatolian (Indo-European)
Iranian or Germanic
Iranian or Indo-Aryan
- Dadicae / Daradai / Daradas (Darada > Darda > Dard?) (may have been possible ancestors of the Dards, an Indo-Aryan people, and not an Iranian one), they dwelt in the region of the upper course of the Indus, in modern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Gilgit area of the modern Gilgit-Baltistan, both in Pakistan and also in Kashmir Valley and Chenab Valley in India.
- Sattagydans, people that dwelt in Sattagydia (Old Persian Thataguš; th = θ, from θata - "hundred" and guš - "cows", country of the People of "Hundred Cows"), may have been an Iranian people of Sindh with Indo-Aryan influence or the opposite, an Indo-Aryan people of Sindh with Iranian influence.
- Sogdi (Sogdoí), people that inhabited where today is the Sibi Division valley in Balochistan, between Balochistan and Sindh, and most of the Larkana Division, and parts of the Sukkur Division to the west of the Indus river, in Sindh, their main city was called Sogdorum Regia (maybe today's Sukkur) by the ancient Greek and Roman authors, and was on the Indus river banks. They may have been, as the name could tell, a branch of the Sogdians, the "Indus Sogdians", in a region of the west Indus valley or they also may have been an Indo-Aryan people of the Indus valley with a coincidental name with the Sogdians.
- Shakya - a clan of Iron Age India (1st millennium BCE), habitating an area in Greater Magadha, on the foothills of the Himalaya mountains. Some scholars argue that the Shakya were of Scythian (Saka) origin and assimilated into Indo-Aryan peoples.[39][40] Siddhartha Gautama (also known as Buddha or Shakyamuni - Sage of the Shakyas) (c. 6th to 4th centuries BCE), whose teachings became the foundation of Buddhism, was the best-known Shakya.
Iranian or Nuristani
- Kambojas / Komedes / Kapisi / Rishikas / Tambyzoi / Ambautae[41][42] - a people that lived in a country called Kumuda, probably in what is now part of Afghanistan. There are different views among scholars about their ethnic and linguistic kinship. According to some they are possible ancestors of Pamir peoples in the Pamir Mountains, roughly Badakhshan region of Tajikistan and Afghanistan and parts of the Hindu Kush or Paropamisus in east central Afghanistan and northwestern Pakistan)[43][44][45] According to other scholars[46][47][48] they were an old transitional people between Iranian and Indo-Aryan peoples and as such they may have been the ancestors of the Nuristani people (until the end of the 19th century they were known as Kafirs because they were not Muslims, and practiced an ancient Indo-Iranian religion like today the Kalash people). In Antiquity, one of the regions that they dwelt was in the southern and eastern slopes of the Paropamisus Mountains (today's Hindu Kush in east central Afghanistan and northwestern Pakistan)
- Ambautae
- Ashvakas / Assacenii / Assacani / Aspasii (Aspasians): A few scholars have linked the historical Afghans (modern Pakhtuns/Pashtuns) to the Ashvakas (the Ashvakayanas and Ashvayanas of Pāṇini or the Assakenoi and Aspasio of Arrian). The name Afghan is said to have derived from the Ashvakan of Sanskrit texts.[49][50][51] Ashvakas are identified as a branch of the Kambojas. This people was known, by Greek and Roman authors, as Assakanoi and Assacani. The similarity of the name Assacani with the name Sacae/Sacans/Sakas made that the two peoples were confused by Greeks and Romans (as is shown in map 11 regarding the Pamir mountains on the upper right edge). However the Pamir mountains were dwelt by the Asvaka Kambojas and not by the Sacans although they were related peoples (they were both East Iranians, however the Asvaka Kambojas were or Southeast Iranians or ancestors of the Nuristani while the Sacans/Sakas, Scythians or Sarmatians, were Northeast Iranians).
- Cabolitae, in the region of Kabul (today's capital of Afghanistan), part of the old Kingdom of Kapisa
- Indo-Kambojas
- Parama Kambojas, Kumuda or Komedes, of the Alay Valley or Alay Mountains, north of Hindukush / Paropamisus in today's far southern Kyrgyzstan and far northern Tajikistan. They formed the Parama Kamboja Kingdom. In ancient Sanskrit texts, their territory was known as Kumudadvipa and it formed the southern tip of the Sakadvipa or Scythia. In classical literature, this people are known as Komedes. Indian epic Mahabharata designates them as Parama Kambojas[52]
- Rishikas, some historians believe the Rishikas were a part of, or synonymous with, the Kambojas. However, there are other theories regarding their origins.
- Tambyzi / Tambyzoi
Iranian or Slavs
Iranian or Thracian
Iranian or Thracian-Iranian (Cimmerian) or Northwest Caucasian
Iranian or Tocharian
There are different or conflicting views among scholars regarding the ethnic and linguistic kinship of the peoples known by the Han Chinese as Wusun and Yuezhi and also other less known peoples (a minority of scholars argue that they were Tocharians, based, among other things, on the similarity of names like "Kushan" and the native name of "Kucha" (Kuśi) and the native name "Kuśi" and Chinese name "Gushi" or the name "Arsi" and "Asii",[55] however most scholars argue that they were possibly Northeastern Iranian peoples)[56][57]
- Argippaei
- Asii / Issedones / Wusun (may have been the same people called by different exonym names)
- Gushi or Jushi or Gushineans (an obscure ancient people that lived in two regions: in the Turpan Basin, i.e. Chinese Jushi or Gushi, including Khocho or Qočo, known in Chinese as Gaochang; and also in a large northern region, roughly in many parts of the region later known as Dzungaria, south of the Altay Mountains; they were the basis of the Gushi or Jushi Kingdom. They spoke a language that eventually diverged into two dialects, as noted by diplomats from the Han empire) (they may have been one of the peoples misnamed "Tocharians", speakers of Tocharian A?) (there are different views among scholars about their ethnic and linguistic kinship)
- Yuezhi / Gara?[60][61][62] (an ancient Indo-European speaking people, in the western areas of the modern Chinese province of Gansu, during the 1st millennium BC, or in Dunhong, in the Tian Shan, later they migrated westward and southward into south Central Asia, in contact and conflict with the Sogdians and Bactrians, and they possibly were the people called by the name Tocharians or Tukhara, which was possibly an Iranian speaking people not to be confused with another people misnamed or not as "Tocharians") (according to the Iranian historian Jahanshah Derakhshani the Kochi or Kuchi people, a group of nomadic Ghilji or Ghilzai Pakhtun, are descendants from the Yuezhi that were assimilated into the Pakhtun, the name derives from Guci, formerly Chinese: 月氏; pinyin: Yuèzhī)
- Greater-Yuezhi (Tu Gara?) (Dà Yuèzhī – 大月氏) (Tu Gara > Tu Kara? > Tu Khara?) Possibly the Iranian Tocharians (not to be confused with the peoples called "Tocharians" in a misnomer) (possibly they were the ancestors of the Kushans)
- Tusharas (Tukharas?), could have been identical with the Greater-Yuezhi, the greater part of Yuezhi, are the people that migrated from western Gansu and after from the Ili Valley, migrated southward and settled in Tukhara, another name for Bactria after the invasion of the Iranian Tocharians that came from the north and northeast (not to be confused with the peoples mistakenly called "Tocharians" which were of another Indo-European branch of peoples)
- Lesser-Yuezhi (Xiǎo Yuèzhī – 小月氏)
Iranian, Tocharian or Turkic
Iranian or Non-Indo-European peoples
Iranian or Northeast Caucasian
Iranian or Turkic
- Xiongnu (ruling class)[69] The Xiongnu could also be synonymous with the Huns, that are assumed to be a Turkic people, although there is not certainty or consensus about this matter.
Iranian or Ugric